Lucy Aphramor is a radical dietician and poet. I first met them in 2017, when they performed their show The Naked Dietician: Raising the Roof at the Quaker Meeting House. In 2018 they were back with a new show Enough, interrogating self-harm, particularly cutting. You can read my reviews of each of those shows by clicking on the links.
This year Lucy did things a little differently. As part of PBH’s Free Fringe, they offered workshops entitled Taking The Biscuit Back. I joined one of them at Kafe Kweer, and it was one of the best of many good experiences in Fringe 2025.
Lucy never puts people on the spot; on the day I was there some of us spoke and some of us didn’t, and that was fine – but it was really easy to join in because Lucy makes everything so interesting. They began by offering us different coloured plastic cones, each with a name tag; as a group we’d to choose one from each colour, the content of the rest of the hour being dictated by our choices.
First up was honey. Is honey better than sugar? Lucy asked. My first thought was no, they both rot your teeth – but as ever, Lucy gently led us to think more deeply. Sugar is mass produced and very much a product of our colonialist past. Honey can only be made by bees, and the more bees we have, the better it is for our ecosystem. Bees are of course natural pollinators, but it doesn’t stop there. Honey can be produced locally, which means not only fewer food miles but, just as importantly, a way of bringing communities together. Bees can be kept on a shared allotments, in woodlands, on moors, just about anywhere they have a food source.
The problem is, of course, that honey – especially locally produced honey – is much more expensive than a bag of sugar from a supermarket. So is it a middle class luxury? Are we once again imposing our values on people who can’t afford the choice? Are we telling them they’re ‘doing it wrong’? Or is there a better way of living?
Because if there’s one thing Lucy wants to challenge, it’s the idea that there are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ foods, and that if we’re not obsessed with ‘clean eating’ (a thin disguise for eating disorders if ever there was one) we really should be ashamed of ourselves.
From honey and sugar, Lucy moves on to diabetes and high blood pressure. As an NHS dietician (they left the NHS some years ago), they were taught to dish out the same advice to everyone. It was designed for white British people, and even without its racist undertones, what that advice often really said was ‘it’s all your own fault.’ ‘Eat less, move more’ was the mantra. But Lucy noticed that very few people were getting better. The advice did not take into account a person’s racial and cultural background – there was no context whatsoever. Asian people have higher cholesterol; must be all that ghee, right? No, says Lucy, quite wrong, and not only wrong but also racist. Men of colour have high blood pressure because they’re fat and don’t exercise, yes? No.
Our next choice of topic was a cheese toasty. Should we choose that or an apple? Is the toasty bad for you? Why? asks Lucy? We are we denying ourselves what we feel like eating? Is it because we think it’s ‘bad’ for us, or are there more complex things at work? (Spoiler: yes.) Self-denial is part and parcel of all eating disorders and they in turn are political; we don’t think we deserve to have what we want, or we refuse it because that’s the only control we have left in a state of oppression.
no amount of nice crunchy apples will fill a cheese toasty shaped hole
The group’s next choice was the mysterious label ‘key rings’, and indeed we were given some, with Lucy’s motto ‘Well now’ on the fob. Normally ‘Well Now’ is followed by a row of dots, and those dots are important; they are intended to signal,
the value of pausing , effecting, turning over an idea or question rather than rushing in with a definitive answer or to slam someone down …
Finally, a doughnut – or rather a spangly sparkly pretend one. What thought did it bring to mind? For me that would be calories, too many, sugar, bad – but what if you eat a whole bag of doughnuts? Why would you do that? ‘Comfort eating’, of course, but when does comfort spill over into distress? What void are we trying to fill? How do we feel before we eat the bagful, and how would we feel afterwards? And most fundamentally, why? Do we feel comforted, or do we still feel empty?
I once knew someone who, despite being a diabetic, used to drink a whole bottle of wine on a weekday in what was clearly an act of defiance; I hate my body because it’s failed me, I’m not going to let it tell me what to do. And you don’t have to be a diabetic to feel that way; some annoying stick-thin influencer says I should keep celery sticks ready in the fridge – bother that, I’ll eat a box of chocolates instead, that’ll show them. Again, it seems to me to come back to control and isolation; we lack the power to change the thing that’s really upset us, so we turn to something accessible for a quick but unsuccessful fix. In a supportive, properly functioning community no-one would need to feel alone and unheard.
Lucy talks us round all of our chosen topics, and really opens our eyes (well mine at least, maybe others’ were already open) to the multi-layered issues behind every food choice. Racism, misogyny, elitism, homophobia, transphobia, class – they’re all in there somewhere. The more you think about it, the more complicated food choices become. We judge ourselves, we judge others; we deny ourselves, we (sometimes) push food onto others. What is going on here, and why have we become so disconnected from what was once a simple matter of nourishing body and soul?
This was such an engrossing subject that I could happily have stayed and chatted to Lucy all day. Food is so fundamental to our lives, yet it comes with so much baggage, both political and personal. Lucy lays it all bare without the smallest hint of preaching; they invite us to think and to make up our own minds.
And of course, they also treat us to some poetry, which adds even more power to their words.
Kafe Kweer was the perfect venue for these workshops; a welcoming and judgement-free place with good coffee and lots of interesting stuff to buy. I was really sorry to hear that it’s closing at the end of the month, as its lease is not being renewed. We need more cafes like this, places that welcome everyone, and where it doesn’t matter how cool you are or are not.
Taking The Biscuit Back was directed by Tian Glasgow, whose work is driven by social concerns such as race and class and their impact on communities. I had a great chat with Tian, someone who sees care for audience and artist as integral to the production. Tian is also Programme Development Lead for Something to Aim For, a charity that believes that everyone has the right to access the arts and their individual creativity.
Lucy received a Keep It Fringe grant to support these workshops.
If you would like to know more about Lucy’s work, their website is here, and they can also be found on Instagram here.
